


Plastic Smiles and Denial

by wardrobespierre



Series: Trap You In A Song [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: BROT3, Beauty Pageants, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Panic Attacks, Suicide Attempt, Trans Male Character, but i mean it's really sad but it's also really cute, i don't know what the hell else to tag this as
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-03
Updated: 2014-09-03
Packaged: 2018-02-15 23:54:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2248104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wardrobespierre/pseuds/wardrobespierre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set four years before 'Trap You in a Song' - Enjolras is struggling to face his past as he begins the transition process. Luckily, he now has Combeferre and Courfeyrac to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Plastic Smiles and Denial

**Author's Note:**

> YOOOOO, HECKA TRIGGER WARNINGS; body-shaming, disordered eating, suicide, anxiety and panic attacks, alcohol, racism, emotional manipulation, and gender dysphoria. Please be careful my lovely lovely readers, I wrote this to vent my own transition angst and I didn't hold back with the feels, it might be too real for some!
> 
> Also it's very monologue-y. Just in case you don't like that style and want to avoid it. :3 And Courfeyrac and Combeferre aren't a thing yet, for the sake of clarity.
> 
> the gender clinic i'm trying to get into makes you do the statement thing - i don't know if others do, though. (I hope for everyone else's sake they don't cuz it's fucking awful and I wouldn't wish that shit on anyone.)
> 
> (Title is from the great Queen Bey's 'Pretty Hurts'. Someone played it last week at work while I was halfway through this thing and the Enj feels nearly knocked me flat on the shop floor.)

Enjolras was panicking.

A tiny, rational part of his brain was aware, dimly, that he was panicking. 

That didn’t do a single solitary _fucking_ thing to help the fact that his heart was frantically trying to beat down his sternum, his chest felt like it was being slowly but surely crushed and he was choking on the sobs that kept trying to force their way out of his throat. His room was too small. He drew his knees up to his chest where he sat, on his bed in the corner, and flattened his palms against the walls, pushing as though he could open up more space by sheer force of will. He couldn’t breathe. The air was thick, his head was spinning and he was sure he was suffocating even as he gasped in great gulps of oxygen. He needed to get out, it was too hot, he needed to be outside, but he couldn’t bring himself to move. His fingernails scraped vainly over the plaster.

_They weren’t going to believe him. It wouldn’t be enough. They won’t listen. They won’t help. He’ll be stuck like this forever. He can’t do this. He can’t do this. He can’t._

Over near-deafening screaming in his head, the knock of the door, however gentle, made Enjolras jump out of his skin.

“Enjolras? It’s Combeferre.”

Combeferre. He’d known the man a few months, his room was downstairs and they had three lectures together. He had already become the best friend Enjolras had ever had in his life, with the possible exception of Courfeyrac, who’s room was opposite. The three of them had bonded in their first week over coffee snobbery and Rousseau, and they always got lunch together at the little wholefoods cafe together after their anthropology lecture on tuesdays, and - _shit -_ today was tuesday, and he’d missed the lecture, hadn’t he?

“Enj? Are you in there, dude?” That was Courfeyrac’s voice, thin and anxious. Enjolras buried his face in his hands and dug his fingernails into his eyebrows. The sharp pain grounded him long enough to choke out a reply.

“I’m h-here.”

“Are you alright?” Combeferre’s voice was urgent. Enjolras took a deep, shuddering breath.

“I - I - I’m not-”

“Can we come in, Enj?”

A fresh wave of sobs strangled his answer before he could voice it, but Courfeyrac pushed the door open tentatively anyway, peering around with eyes wide with concern. 

“Shit, buddy -” Courfeyrac started towards him, the door swinging open further to reveal Combeferre, who blanched when he met Enjolras’s eyes.  

Courfeyrac approached him like he might approach a frightened animal, slowly, palms open. “Do you need space, or can I hug you?”

Enjolras couldn’t think. Both, maybe. Both sounded good. He reached out and grasped Courfeyrac’s outstretched hand, allowing his friend to tug him off his bed and wrap his arms around him. Courfeyrac was slightly shorter than he was, and he smelled like oranges and spice. Enjolras clung to his sweater as a firm hand rubbed up and down his back. “S-sorry,” he choked. “Sorry, sorry, sorry-”

“What on earth for?” Courfeyrac pulled back, grabbing Enjolras’s shoulders. “Talk to me, Enj, what’s going on? Do I need to fucking kill someone because I will, I swear to god-”

“Courfeyrac,” Combeferre interrupted as Enjolras started to shake his head frantically. “I think it would be really helpful if you grabbed Enjolras a glass of water. Would you mind?”

At any other time, Enjolras was sure he would have found the way that Courfeyrac released him and bolted for the door, crying “I’m on it,” in his eagerness to be of assistance positively adorable, but right now, the quick movement and the door slamming behind him made his stomach lurch. Combeferre winced. He sat down cross legged on the floor, gesturing for Enjolras to join him, and taking both his hands when the blond obeyed.

“You’re hyperventilating, Enj,” he murmured.

“Can’t - breathe - sorry,” Enjolras gasped, clinging to Combeferre’s hands like a lifeline.

“It’s okay. You’re alright. Now I’m going to make a suggestion that you might not like, okay, and you’re free to say no.” He paused for a moment, smiling gently when Enjolras’s eyes widened with apprehension. “It would be easier for you to breathe if you took your binder off.”

“No,”Enjolras replied immediately. “No, no, fucking no no no so much no-”

“Alright, no one’s making you, dear, no one’s making you,” Combeferre soothed. His thumbs moved over the backs of Enjolras’s hands, slow, even circles. “Just breathe with me, okay? Deep breath in - and out. And again - and out. That’s it. You’re doing great.”

Enjolras’s tears flowed faster as his breathing slowed, gasps giving way to great, heaving sobs that shook his body to the core. Combeferre shuffled until he was sitting beside him to rub circles between the blond’s shoulder blades, murmuring comforting nonsense as he buried his face in his hands. Enjolras didn’t even notice when Courfeyrac slipped back into the room, not until he felt his friend sit down on his other side, gently depositing a box of tissues in his lap and curling an arm around his waist. It was some time before Enjolras’s sobs subsided, until he could gulp down the water that Courfeyrac had fetched and breathe easily. 

“Okay, now,” Combeferre took Enjolras’s hand in both of his and looked at him over the top of his glasses. “You want to tell us what’s happened?”

“Nothing _happened -”_

“Enjy, did we or did we not just catch you in the middle of a _massive panic attack-”_

“Courfeyrac-!”

“No, it’s okay, ‘Ferre,” Enjolras cut him off, grabbing each of his friends’ knee. “Its okay. Yes, Courf, you did, but it’s nothing so dramatic as you’re thinking, it’s just-” he took a deep, shuddering breath. “Okay, you guys know I went to the doctors yesterday and got my referral to the gender clinic, right? So I got sent the handbook and the forms to fill out this morning.”

“Ri-ight,” Courfeyrac said slowly. “Isn’t that... good?”

“Well, yes. But, actually, no. Because the forms are one thing, but...”

“But?”

“They want me to write an autobiographical statement on how gender dysphoria has affected my life, and I’ve - I’ve been trying so hard and I’ve been doing so well and I _can’t_ relive that, you don’t understand, it was a _nightmare,_ I _can’t-”_

“Shh, you’re alright.” Combeferre took Enjolras’s hand, squeezing gently. “Lets just take a step back, okay? Is it really truly necessary that you do the statement?”

“ _Yes,_ because if I don’t do it they won’t see me, and if they don’t see me I can’t get approved for HRT, and then I’ll be _stuck-”_

“Okay, okay; are you _sure_ there’s no other options?”

“ _Yes._ I can’t see someone privately, as soon as I come out to Dad he’ll cut me off so I have to save as much money as I can now, do you know how much private psychiatrists _cost?!”_

“So you _absolutely have to_ write this statement.” Combeferre frowned. “That seems... I mean, surely they would understand how difficult that would be -”

“They don’t care,” Enjolras snorted. 

“They’re medical professionals. It’s their _job_ to care.”

The blond laughed bitterly. 

“What if we helped?” Courfeyrac piped up. “What if - I don’t know - would it be easier to talk to us, and we can write down what you say?”

Enjolras hesitated. “Actually... maybe.”

“Combeferre types _ridiculously_ fast.” Courfeyrac smiled hopefully at his friend over Enjolras’s head. “What do you reckon, ‘Ferre? Would that work?”

“If Enjolras is okay with that, it could definitely work. Enj?”

“Well... No, no, you guys don’t need to hear about that. It’ll only bring you down.”

“Please,” Courfeyrac scoffed, tightening his arm around the blond’s waist. “We’re your friends, Enj. This is what we’re here for.”

 

Enjolras agreed, eventually, gratitude and preemptive guilt warring in his chest as Combeferre took position, cross-legged, on the floor with Enjolras’s laptop and he lay down, staring at the ceiling with his head on Courfeyrac’s lap.

“Okay,” Combeferre hummed. “Lets start with how your dysphoria started to manifest, I suppose.”

“Well, I didn’t realize I was a boy for ages,” Enjolras began, sighing as Courfeyrac carded his fingers through his hair. “I mean, I knew I was jealous of the boys at school, but theoretically, any little girl could be, if she didn’t like dresses or she didn’t want her ears pierced.” 

“Did you prefer less girly clothes, then, when you were little?” Courfeyrac prompted. 

“I’m sure I would have, if I was allowed to wear them.”

Combeferre paused in his typing and glanced up, frowning. “Was your clothing that strictly controlled?”

“Yes.” Enjolras hesitated, and reached up to twine his fingers with Courfeyrac’s before continuing. “So, obviously, you guys tell anyone this and I’ll kill you in in your sleep, but I was a pageant kid.”

Combeferre let out a strangled little groan and Courfeyrac’s eyebrows shot up into his hairline. “You were a _what??”_

“My mother really, really liked beauty pageants. She was a model before she married Dad, and she did the pageant thing when she was young, and I think she wanted me to go the same way. I competed in beauty pageants from when I was three right up until I was sixteen.”

“Beauty pageants,” Courfeyrac repeated incredulously. “Like, for _girls?”_

“No, Courf, for pedigree bulldogs,” Enjolras deadpanned, and Courfeyrac snorted.

“Sorry, it’s just... it’s hard to imagine you, you know, on a catwalk, in a tiara and _heels.”_

“Do me a favor and don’t imagine it, please,” Enjolras begged, cringing slightly. 

“Did you say you started when you were _three?”_ Combeferre asked. 

“Yeah. Apparently I loved them when I started, too. I loved dancing, and I blew kisses to the audience and the judges. Some kids that young really hated it - for me, that was the only time I didn’t. I started hating it when I was about five or six, when the makeup came out. Once mum had to pull me out of a pageant because I fought like a wildcat when she went to put my mascara on, and ended up with black smudged all over my face and I wouldn’t stop screaming. God, I was in _so_ much trouble.” He chuckled darkly. Courfeyrac exhanged a distressed look with Combeferre and squeezed Enjolras’s hand. “After that incident I sort of just accepted that that was a part of my life. I mean, I wasn’t happy, and I acted out a lot at school. I beat up other boys when they wouldn’t let me play dodgeball with them, and I broke a girl’s barbie once because she told me I was ugly. I was so afraid of being ugly. Mum told me all the time, if I ate too much I’d get fat and ugly, if I didn’t wear what she picked I’d look ugly, if I didn’t let her do my hair and makeup I’d look ugly. It was like, being ugly was the worst thing you could be. Sometimes I called other kids ugly, just to try and make myself feel better, I guess. I was a horrible kid.”

“What about high school?” Combeferre prompted.

“High school was different; I went to an all-girls school, and there was a lot of really pretty girls there. Some of them I’d compete against in pageants, but we weren’t friends. We really weren’t friends. I kept to myself more. I... I guess I had friends, I had girls in my year that I sat with in class, and went shopping with after school, but... I never felt close to them. I mean we just talked about clothes and tv shows and how much we hated our bodies. Actually, that should have been my first clue; they were like ‘I hate my butt’ or ‘I hate my hands’ or‘I hate my nose’ - I was like ‘I hate _everything’._ ” He paused, swallowing hard. Combeferre was typing furiously and didn’t look up, but Courfeyrac frowned down at him, dark eyes full of sympathy. Enjolras forced a little smile up at his friend before continuing. “That was pretty much my life for a few years; I did my pageants, did my homework, tried not to let anyone know that I was soul-crushingly unhappy and just kept going somehow. Until I qualified for some big-deal national pageant or something when I was sixteen. And I remember it so well -” Enjolras sat up suddenly, tugging his hand free of Courfeyrac’s and pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes, breathing hard. “Sorry. Fuck, sorry, give me a sec -”

“Take your time, dear,” Combeferre murmured, as Courfeyrac shuffled to sit behind him and started to gently knead his shoulders. Enjolras hummed appreciatively and dropped his hands into his lap, and started to speak again as he relaxed under Courfeyrac’s minstrations. 

“Mum was so fucking excited. We were meant to be up early to drive to the city, and then catch a plane interstate. I skipped dinner, which made Mum even happier, and I went to bed early - and I sat on my bed staring at my bags all packed, and I thought about going out on stage again, in the white silk gown that made me look a goddamn bride - I wasn’t allowed dairy for a month because of that stupid dress - and I cried and cried and by the time I finished crying, Mum and Dad were both asleep. I decided I wasn’t going to do it. They couldn’t make me. I put on these old faded jeans and this huge sweater that my aunt had knitted me - Mum hated it, because it was so big and kinda messy-looking, but the wool was soft and bright red and I loved it. So I wore that. And I stole Mum’s valium, a bottle of whiskey and a pair of kitchen scissors and I rode my bike down to the beach, and I sat in the shallow water and cut all my hair off, and watched it get tossed around and lost in the waves. Then I washed the pills down with the whiskey and waited for the tide to come in and take me away.” It felt so strange to say it out loud, after all these years. Enjolras felt oddly disconnected, barely noticing that Courfeyrac’s hands had stilled on his shoulders. The flat, emotionless words hardly seemed to fit with the night he remembered; he had fallen off his bike twice on the way to the beach, riding too fast and tears blurring his vision, and he’d laughed - _laughed -_ in between gulps of whiskey, twisted satisfaction at finally owning his own body buoying his spirits and reinforcing his determination. 

“Enjolras.” Combeferre’s voice brought him back to earth; his friend was peering at him over the top of his glasses, a sort of barely controlled horror in his gaze. “Was that a suicide attempt?”

He couldn’t see Courfeyrac’s face, but he could feel the tension in his hands. Enjolras tried to smile comfortingly. “I fucked it up, of course - you can’t overdose on valium, though I suppose I’m lucky I didn’t vomit the whiskey and choke on it. And the tide was going out, not coming in. A surfer found me just before dawn and I woke up in hospital.”

Courfeyrac’s hands left Enjolras’s shoulders abruptly and the dark-haired man threw his arms around his waist, practically dragging Enjolras into his lap with the force of the hug. Enjolras leaned back into the embrace and reaching up to touch Courfeyrac’s face where it rested on his shoulder. 

“Fuck, Enj,” Courf muttered, his voice cracking slightly. “I’m so - _fuck -_ I’m so glad you’re still here.”

“Me too,” Enjolras murmured, glancing worriedly over at Combeferre, who had taken his glasses off and was pinching the bridge of his nose, face twisted as though he was in pain. “‘Ferre?”

Combeferre let out a long, shaky sigh. “Enjolras... jesus.” He unfolded his long legs and stood, crossing the room in two long steps to stand in front of Enjolras and Courfeyrac. “You can have him back in a minute, Courf,” he said in a tone that broached no argument, reaching down to catch Enjolras’s hands and haul him to his feet and into his arms when Courfeyrac released him. He hugged the blond tightly, burying his face in his curls. “You poor little fool,” he mumbled, and Enjolras was startled to hear the edge of tears in his voice. “Everything you are, everything you bring to the world, everything you have to live for -”

“‘Ferre, this was years ago,” Enjolras told him, returning the hug just as fiercely. “I didn’t - I didn’t _know -_ how could I have known?!”

Combeferre held him in silence for another minute before he let him go, pressing a kiss to his temple before stepping away and back to the computer, hastily brushing the back of his hand over his eyes. “Well, that’s going in the statement,” he said brusquely, his voice oddly hoarse. “You tried to kill yourself because you didn’t think you had a future worth living for.”

Enjolras winced as he sat back down next to Courfeyrac. “A very simple way of putting it, but essentially, yes.”

“These people _are_ simple,” Combeferre spat with uncharacteristic venom, fingers stabbing at the keyboard. “To think of you writing this by _yourself_ \- it’s no wonder you panicked. What an absolute disgrace to the medical system.”

“Preach,” Courfeyrac agreed vehemently. Enjolras smiled even as his eyes prickled and burned.

“I love you guys. You know that, right?”

Combeferre’s hands stilled over the keyboard and he glanced over with a watery smile. Courfeyrac wrapped his arms around him again. “Love you too, prettyboy.” 

Enjolras leaned into his friend. “Anyway, so I got put in a psych ward for three weeks. I saw therapists every day, and they put me on meds for depression, and anxiety, and one to help me sleep. I did mention to one therapist that I felt like perhaps I was in the wrong body, that my entire life seemed _wrong -_ but she didn’t really get it. Well, I mean, she thought it was just the pageants, and when I was discharged they gave my mother strict instructions to keep me out of pageants and to let me wear and eat what I wanted. That was kind of a relief, except that Mum seemed to feel somehow personally victimized by that, and guilt-tripped me about it at every opportunity. She liked to pull out my most recent pageant photo, where I’m standing there in that idiotic crown, and talk about how beautiful I looked - I never had the heart to tell her that the only reason my smile was so nice was because I was vividly imagining bludgeoning the MC and the judges to death with the big stupid trophy. If you look closely you can see how hard I’m gripping the damn thing.” He gave another bitter little laugh. “Christ. Anyway, I started spending less time at home, and more time at the library, studying. My school friends stopped talking to me because I’d ‘gotten weird’, but I honestly couldn’t care less. My grades were fantastic. I loved studying. And sometimes on weekends I’d catch the train to the city and study in the State Library, and that just seemed like the greatest thing in the world - everyone was so _different_ in the city. It seemed so much more _free._ And then one day, when I was seventeen, I went up there for the day and there was this huge protest rally outside the library. And it was just...” Enjolras sighed, grinning at the memory. “There was so much color, and everyone was shouting, all hippies and punks and hipsters and relatively normal-looking people all chanting together - it was so _beautiful._ I was curious, so I approached these two guys - they were holding hands, and one was holding a big red and black flag. I don’t know, I felt sort of drawn to them both. I asked them what was going on, and they explained that it was a protest against the inhumane treatment of refugees. I didn’t have a clue what they were talking about, so they moved a little bit away from the rally, sat me down on the grass and explained the whole issue. I was just blown away. I was sitting there with my mouth hanging open, horrified like I’d never been before in my life, and when they finished, I started crying. I couldn’t help it. One of them rolled me a cigarette, and handed to me with a sympathetic pat on the shoulder, saying ‘Kid, you look like you could use one’. My first smoke, incidentally.”

“Well, seventeen, that’s not _too_ bad, I suppose,” Courfeyrac admitted grudgingly. Combeferre tutted but said nothing. 

“Anyway, I ended up joining the march, walking with those guys, and I ended up at some socialist meeting or other after the rally. I went home with my bag full of left-wing newspapers and my head spinning.”

“The birth of a legend,” Courf sniggered. 

“I didn’t tell my folks about the rally. I told them I’d just studied. Dad actually brought the rally up over dinner, he’d seen it on the news or something, and asked if I’d seen them - I sort of lied and said I’d seen them but hadn’t paid much attention. Then Dad went off on this big rant about refugees, and oh my god, he was so _racist._ Like I guess I’d heard it before but... it just seemed so much more real. And Mum just sat there agreeing with him. I didn’t know what to say. I think I said something like ‘Surely it isn’t their fault they’re born where they are’, and Dad was like ‘it’s their own fault their country is how it is, they made their bed, they have to lie in it.’ And one of the things I’d learned that same day was, no, it’s not their fault, it’s _our_ fault, it’s quite literally western colonialism’s fault. But I didn’t say it. I sort of just let him rant and then went to bed early. And I didn’t take my sleeping pills, so I lay there for ages thinking and thinking and I realized two things; one, life is pointless if you don’t use it to improve the lives of others and the world in general. And two, I was still so, so far from who I wanted to be. As I was falling asleep, I was trying to imagine my future, picture who I wanted to become, you know? And I had this dream, I can’t remember it too well, but I was talking to a bunch of people, like, making a speech, and I could see myself and I was wearing red and-” he smiled bashfully. “And I was a man. I was a man, and I looked so _powerful._ When I woke up I was so happy for all of five seconds, and then I went and looked in the mirror and... well.” He blew out a breath. “At least I knew what I wanted.”

“Go on,” Courfeyrac prompted, when Enjolras fell silent. “What happened next?”

“What happened next?” Enjolras huffed a little laugh. “I started going up to the city every weekend, looking for posters announcing more rallies, and then I’d go to those rallies, literally any of the left wing rallies, I went to all of them, as long as they were on weekends. I talked to people, asked questions, I just obsessively wanted to _learn._ And I started reading political blogs and watched speeches and debates on youtube and I just threw myself into it, and I kept studying really hard, and I started screaming fights with Dad at the dinner table about politics, and when I wasn’t doing any of those I was fantasizing about being a man. I’d dream that I’d just wake up one day in a male body. And before I knew it, I was graduating. It was a week after graduation that I finally just googled ‘I should have been born a man’ and, well, it turned out that transgender people are more than some distant concept I knew fuck all about. I stayed up literally all night researching what being transgender was, and the process of physical transition, I found a bunch of blogs with ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos and transition advice, and I found clubs and support networks for transgender people in the city and medical clinics with doctors specializing in trans health and I ordered myself a binder-” Enjolras shook his head, grinning all over his face. “I don’t know, I think that might have been the happiest night of my life so far.” Courfeyrac’s arms tightened around him and Combeferre smiled at the screen, still typing furiously. “As soon as I moved up here, I was like, right, I’m gonna get this done. I started wearing my binder every day and I told whole Queer Club I was transgender when I joined up, and I met you guys, and you helped me tell all my teachers and everyone else in the dorm,” he shot Courfeyrac a grateful smile - “And it’s only been a couple of months, but having everyone refer to me as ‘he’, bar a few slip-ups, and call me Enjolras is so great, _so_ great, I can’t even express it, but I really do still feel like I’m in this weird half-way state and the physical dysphoria is still very very much there. So I _need_ hormone replacement and I _need_ surgery, and if they won’t help me, I don’t know what I’ll do. I really don’t.”

“They’ll help you,” Combeferre said firmly, closing the laptop and smiling at Enjolras reassuringly. “Enjolras, I just typed up a page and a half of gender dysphoria hell. If they turn you away they’d be liable to be sued for malpractice.”

“Thank you, ‘Ferre,” Enjolras said sincerely. “Thank you both, so much. I’d never have got through that without you.”

“Well, you would,” Combeferre reasoned. “If I know you, and I think I do, you’d have got through it by sheer willpower, but you’d have half destroyed yourself in the process.”

“He means ‘you’re welcome’.” Courfeyrac rolled his eyes and grinned at Combeferre, his head still on Enjolras’s shoulder. Combeferre quirked a smile back before standing, crossing the room to sit with the two of them and taking one of Enjolras’s hands in both of his. 

“Are you alright, my friend?” he asked seriously.

Enjolras nodded - but then his lip wobbled and his face crumpled, a deep sob tearing out of his throat even as he bit down on his fist to stifle it. 

“Group hug,” Courfeyrac announced, grabbing Combeferre’s sleeve and hauling him close until Enjolras was sandwiched between them. “‘Atta boy, Enj. Let it out.” 

For a full ten minutes at least the three of them sat there, Enjolras sobbing unreservedly into Courfeyrac’s sleeve while both his friends held him and mumbled soothing nonsense, Combeferre dropping his glasses on the floor and hiding his own tears in Enjolras’s shoulder. Even stubbornly cheerful Courfeyrac had to blink away the prickling in his eyes and bite down on his lip to stop it trembling. 

“Do you know what we need?” he said, when Enjolras’s breathing started to even out at last. 

“What do we need, Courf?” Combeferre’s voice was slightly hoarse, but he looked up and smiled at the smaller man over Enjolras’s head. The blond was slumped between them, drained and exhausted. 

“We need _motherfucking Disney movies_ and _pizza.”_

 

It was Courfeyrac who volunteered to get pizza from the shop down the road while Combeferre and Enjolras gathered all the pillows and blankets they could to pile them on Enjolras’s floor. By the time Courfeyrac had returned - with not only pizza, but bottles of raspberry soda, a tub of ice cream, and three kinds of raspberry candies - the pile had become a fort, Enjolras’s desk and chair having been dragged over to be utilized in the construction. 

Enjolras couldn’t be sure whether it was sitting in the (rather impressive, if he did say so himself) blanket fort, whether it was the veritable feast of _all_ his favorite foods spread out in front of them and the fact that he was _finally_ starting to get the hang of eating them without guilt or shame, or whether it was Courfeyrac remembering that _Mulan_ was his favorite and setting it up without even having to ask _,_ but he knew he had never felt so light and so full of hope as he did in that moment, late afternoon in his university dorm room, singing loudly along to _Reflection_ with the two best friends he’d ever had in his life. 

_I’m going to be okay,_ he thought to himself, laughing when Courfeyrac hit a bum note and Combeferre threw a jujube at him. _I’m going to be fine._

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> MY BEAUTIFUL DARLING READER-FRIENDS, I OWE YOU ALL SOME APOLOGIES. I didn't post the next chapter of TYIAS last week, and I'm not going to get it done this week either - I wrote this fucker and had a lot of emotions instead. In three weeks time I have a conference to go to and a pretty career-defining presentation to make (well it feels like it anyway, I mean I'm probably building it up too much, ~anxiety~) and that is probably going to consume my life so I'm deeply deeply sorry but if I can update at all before then, it will be a small miracle. Comments, constructive criticism, encouragement etc is always SO APPRECIATED though guys! *blows kisses*


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